Remember Dave Carroll?  Or more importantly – remember “United Breaks Guitars?” I bet United Airlines does – they lost hundreds of millions of dollars in market capitalization after this song became a huge viral hit on Youtube:

‘United Breaks Guitars’ became a veritable anthem for all that is wrong with big, corporate North America, ignoring the ‘normal, everyman.’  It became a microcosm of incredibly poor customer service and corporate arrogance.

Which is why this is just so… awkward?  Tragic?  Funny?  You can’t make up what I’m about to tell you folks:  “On a recent trip to Denver to speak to customer service executives, “this Everyman symbol of the aggrieved traveler was treated, well, like just another customer,” Christine Negroni wrote for The New York Times. “United lost his bag.”

Let me emphasize a point here.  United Airlines LOST the one bag they can’t afford to lose.

Seriously – if I was United Airlines, I’d treat Dave Carroll’s bags with slightly more care than the nuclear football. 

Wow.  Just… wow.  Stand by – I sense a third version of his song in the making.

High speed rail between Toronto’s Union Station and Pearson Airport has been on everyone’s wish list for decades.

And I truly mean everyone – all three levels of government have promised to ‘explore the issue.’ Several studies have spent several millions of dollars exploring possible routes, timetables, scheduling and logistics.

Why hasn’t it happened yet?  Well, there’s the obvious issue, money.  But I have to wonder if it’s also in no small part to idiotic decisions like this.

Forgive me, but you’ve got the money lined up.  The link could remove 5 million people from the roads each and every year… but “18 conditions stipulated by the Ministry of the Environment could set the plan back.”

One of those conditions?  “The trains must use clean technology that is still in development.”

So to clarify – the Ministry of the Provincial Government responsible for cleaning up the environment says in order to take advantage of new, environmentally friendly transportation, you have to use a non-existent engine.

“John Gerretsen, Minister of the Environment, says he believes the technology SHOULD be complete by 2015.”  Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath.

Does anyone want to take odds on whether or not our grandchildren will be complaining about the lack of high-speed rail between Union and Pearson?

Tough situation here.

The Guelph Storm are a junior hockey team based in the midwestern Ontario, Canada community of Guelph.  For those who are unfamiliar with the various levels of hockey, think of it as a double A baseball team.  They attract several thousand fans per game.

They are easily the most popular team in this city of 100,000 people.  As a result, their season-ticket’s list reads like the Who’s Who of the Guelph business community.

So I imagine some of those businessmen are going to be awfully upset when they find out that their email address is now public information to every fellow season-ticket holder.

The Storm were promoting a charitable luncheon, and did so via email.  Unfortunately, in a classic mistake that happens to the just about anyone (Hillary Clinton’s campaign made the same mistake), the Storm did the unthinkable and publicly listed everyone’s address in the “To” field.  As a result, anyone who received the email can easily see every address.

This is NOT a good way to endear yourself to your most important customers – season’s ticket holders.

So how should they fix it?  To send out another email will run the risk of flagging that very weakness to those who hadn’t noticed it the first time.  In effect, it’s like saying “I’m sorry I have this security flaw in my website.  Please don’t take advantage of it.”

I suspect it may be a moot point.  It’s only going to take one upset person to tip off the local newspaper before the Guelph Storm Management are going to be dealing with a very public black eye – in which case, nothing more than an abject apology is going to suffice.  In the meantime, it’s time to think preemptively.

Perhaps a snail mailed apology, along with a voucher to bring a guest to a future Storm game for free?  Or perhaps a coupon for something as simple as a free hot-dog or snack?  Anyone who hadn’t noticed the original mistake may be happy to receive a freebie, while those who are upset are somewhat mollified.

What do YOU think?

This is one of those blog posts I’m almost scared to write, for fear of being sued.

Long story short – Amanda Bonnen has a Twitter account.  She’s hardly an active user… she’s got about 30 followers.  In Twitterverse, this makes her so small as to be insignificant.  She tweeted “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

That got her sued by Horizon Realty – for $50,000.

I don’t even know where to start with the absolute insanity of this.   I’ll leave the whole ‘they’re right to sue/they’re stupid to sue’ argument off of the table for now.  Let’s just examine the communications here.

Either a) Horizon had mold, and had an upset customer, or b) Horizon didn’t have mold, but a customer was trying to claim they did.  One would assume that the reason for her tweet was simply to vent – after all, with so few followers it’s not like she has a large public following.

Horizon has to be naturally worried about statements like this driving people away from their properties.  That makes sense.

So what’s a prudent course of action here?  Did they call her and ask how to make her a happy customer?  No.  Did they investigate her complaint to determine whether or not there was any veracity to her claims?  No.  Did they send her a nasty letter written in crayon, complaining because she wasn’t playing nice?  No.

They sued her for $50,000.  My favourite line of the whole story is “Bonnen wasn’t contacted before the suit was filed or asked to remove the Tweet, (Horizon Realty’s Jeffrey Michael) said: “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.”

So here’s my sole point – in terms of communications, you can’t buy this type of publicity.  Nor would you want to – with coverage across North America, I would suggest that the “good name” of Horizon Realty is going to require a much more vigorous defence after today than before.  In short – it was a collosal, enormous blunder.

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If anyone from Horizon cares to respond, I’m more than happy to print their response verbatim.  It beats getting sued.  Although I’d like to point out that a) I’m in Canada, where if you sue me and lose, you have to pay my court costs and b) as a sole entrepeneur, I doubt you could find enough worth suing over anyway.